Chapter 1
"I'm pregnant." I smiled and handed the pregnancy test to my bestie, Emily Summers.
She took it, glanced down, and fell silent for a few seconds.
She looked up with a strange expression. "Is the baby your husband's?"
I froze. "What do you mean?"
She met my eyes, her lips twitching. "Nothing."
But I saw it. That flicker of panic in her eyes.
*****
Emily and I had been best friends since high school for twelve years.
She was my maid of honor at my wedding.
When I was house hunting, she went with me to see more than twenty different places.
Whenever I fought with Andrew Bennett, my husband, she always took my side.
"Men are all trash." That was her catchphrase.
She always said she didn't want to get married. Being single was fine.
Three years ago, she got pregnant.
"Who's the father?" I asked.
She said it was a married man, and she couldn't let anyone know.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to have the baby." She was so calm about it. "I'll raise the baby myself."
My heart ached for her.
She had terrible morning sickness, so I stopped by every day after work to help her out.
When she was in labor, I was the one pacing outside the delivery room.
When the baby turned one month old, I was the one who organized the whole celebration.
She said she was tight on money, so I lent her three thousand dollars.
She told me, "It's okay." She'd pay me back when she could.
Three years had passed. She hadn't paid me back a single cent.
I never pressed her about it.
She was my best friend, after all.
That was what I always told myself.
Until the day she dropped that bombshell. "Is the baby your husband's?"
I sat in the car, replaying her expression over and over in my mind. Those three seconds of silence. That flicker of panic. And that baffling remark.
Why would she ask, "Is the baby your husband's?"
Shouldn't a normal person say "congratulations"?
I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my chat history with Andrew. Everything looked normal.
He'd check in with me every day, and lately, he claimed he was working late two or three times a week.
Overtime. Suddenly, I realized. For the past three years, he'd been pulling a lot more late nights at work.
It used to be once or twice a month. Then it was two or three times a week.
I scrolled through his social media feed. Everything looked normal. Work updates, gym posts, and the occasional selfie.
Nothing was out of the ordinary.
But I opened up Emily's social media feed.
Three years ago, she started posting tons of baby photos: [Max's first smile.]
[Max's first time saying 'Mommy.']
[Max is three years old.]
I scrolled through the posts one by one. Then I froze.
One photo caught my eye. Max was perched on a man's lap.
The photo only showed the man from the waist down. Dress pants. A belt. The same belt I gave Andrew for his birthday.
I stared at that photo for a long time. Maybe it was a coincidence.
That belt was only a few hundred dollars on Amazon. Tons of people bought it.
Maybe it was a coincidence.
I put my phone down.
Andrew said he'd be working late tonight and would get home around ten.
I waited up for him.
*****
At 9:30, the door swung open.
I was sitting on the couch when he walked in.
"You're back?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, kicking off his shoes. "Work was brutal today."
"Want some water?"
"Sure."
I went to get him some water, sneaking a quick glance at his phone.
He set his phone face down on the coffee table with the screen turned down.
He never used to do that before.
"Honey."
"Yeah?" he replied.
"Where's that belt I gave you?"
He paused for a second. "Which one?"
"The Hermès one. I gave it to you for your birthday last year."
"Oh, that one," he said, taking a sip of water. "It's at the office. I switch it out sometimes."
"I haven't seen you wear it lately."
"It's kind of old-fashioned now." He sounded almost way too natural, like he'd rehearsed that line.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
At two in the morning, I stared at Andrew, who was sound asleep beside me. I picked up his phone.
I knew the password was his birthday.
I opened up WhatsApp. Contacts. No Emily.
I checked his text messages. Nothing. I checked his call history. There was nothing there.
It was so clean that it was suspicious.
I opened his banking app for transfer records.
My heart began to race. March 2023: transfer of $1666.67. April 2023: transfer of $2666.67. May 2023: transfer of $1666.67. The recipient was Ms. Summers. Summers was Emily's last name.
I kept scrolling. Every month, there was a transfer. Some months it was one thousand dollars. Other times it was as much as six thousand.